Lawyers for Kwame Kilpatrick, Detroit’s disgraced former mayor, sent a letter to SkyTel Inc. on Monday demanding $100 million and accusing the communications provider of violating Kilpatrick’s privacy by releasing the scandalous “sex-text” messages that ultimately ruined his career. More here.

Over the past six years, more than 800 students in Chicago’s public school system have claimed they were beaten, whipped and choked – all at the hands of school staff. Since 2003, 568 out of the 818 reports of abuse, were investigated and proved true, according to a report by Chicago TV station CBS 2. One alleged victim, elementary school student Treveon Martin, says he was hit with a belt by a teacher. “He’s threatened almost all the kids in his classroom,” he said. “He holded my arms and he picked my body up, and then he just slammed me on the desk,” Martin said. Click for more.
Disgraced Hip-hop Mayor Lands on His Feet

It’s been a little over a week since former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was released from jail after serving 99 days for perjury, but he might have already landed a new gig. A Texas affiliate of Compuware Corp., a Detroit-based company, is set to name Kilpatrick to a new post soon, reports The Detroit Free Press. Read on.

 It’s safe to say that Detroit’s disgraced ex-mayor has landed on his feet. The day after being released from his 99-day stint in jail, he jetted off to the richest neighborhood in America to begin a new life, supposedly as a high-paid exec. It’s not quite clear what he’ll be doing in the community of Southlake, Texas, where the median household income is about $173,000, but he’ll need every nickel he can scrape up to pay $1 million restitution to the Motor City for his text-message scandal penalty. Read the rest here.

The Kilpatricks give up their vacation home. Jailed ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his wife, Carlita, have sold the Tallahassee, Fla., vacation home that served as their family retreat after the text-message scandal erupted last January.  Read the rest here.

Detroit mayor’s former lover pleads guilty. Silent through months of a sex scandal, the woman whose relationship brought down former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick broke her silence Monday, according to the Sun News Service. She shed tears as she pleaded guilty, the news service reports. Christine Beatty, a former aide to Kilpatrick, accepted a four-month jail sentence on obstruction of justice charges for her part in a lawsuit brought by two police officers, according to the news service. Beatty’s jail sentence will begin Jan. 5. With credit for good behavior, she could be free in about 100 days. 

Prosecutors release former Detroit mayor’s emails. Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick bragged that he occasionally liked to ditch his full-time security, sneak out of the Manoogian Mansion to meet his former mistress and spent city money lavishly to globe-hop and lease cars, according to a Detroit Free Press analysis of emails prosecutors released on Wednesday. The jet-setting Kilpatrick charged $286,000 to city for his travel – $126,000 on his city-issued credit card since 2004 for trips to the Bahamas, South Africa, France, Jamaica, and the Cape Verde Islands – and multiple trips to Texas in his final months, records show. He and former Chief of Staff Christine Beatty sometimes messaged each other about whether he could get free of prying eyes for a rendezvous, which often happened late at night, according to some of the emails released as part of the prosecution’s authentication motion in its case to nab Kilpatrick for misusing city funds. But the motion contains some messages that reveal tension between Kilpatrick and Beatty on March 18, 2004, over Kilpatrick’s relationship with his wife, Carlita Ebony Kilpatrick. In a surprise move, Kilpatrick also sends a message while on travel that indicates how he’d like to “jump [the] bones” of a woman that wasn’t his wife or Beatty. Go here to read the details of the email.
U. of Mich. Black enrollment is up. Almost two years after Michigan had to give up on using affirmative action to increase college admissions, the University of Michigan has 12 percent more African Americans in its freshmen class than the previous year.  Other minority groups were squeezed out, though, as the White freshmen enrollment grew from 55 percent to 62.4 percent of this year’s 5,783 students. Targeted recruitment of underrepresented minorities was the key to the increase from 334 Black freshmen in fall 2007 to 374, said Senior Vice Provost Lester Monts. “Proposal 2 doesn’t prohibit targeted outreach,” Monts said of the 2006 measure that changed the state constitution. Though the change banned the use of affirmative action in college admissions decisions, it doesn’t apply to the university’s outreach efforts, he said.

General Motors Corp has stopped matching payments to employee 401K plans as the nation’s No. 1 automaker attempts to keep its doors open in one of the worse economies it’s ever faced, officials say. The move was made as it figures out its staff needs through November as part of efforts to conserve cash amid a deep downturn in sales, the automaker said on Thursday. GM spokesman Tom Wilkinson said the company could reinstate matching payments into the 401K program if business conditions improve. GM has lost $51 billion over the past three years because of poor auto sales.

Done serving as mayor, Kilpatrick will now serve his prison term.

Ken Cockrel Jr. is the fourth Black mayor in Detroit’s history after Kwame Kilpatrick served his last hours in office as part of a plea agreement to help him avoid the possibility of years in prison. Kilpatrick, pleaded guilty early this month to one felony connected with his having lied under oath and having disciplined two cops whose investigation into overtime abuse by Kilpatrick’s security detail might’ve exposed his extra-marital affair with a staff member. Kilpatrick is expected to begin serving a four-month jail sentence next month and agreed to repay $1 million of the $8.4 million in city funds that he signed over to the ex-cops in a civil settlement. Former City Council President Cockrel begins serving as interim mayor today while the city awaits a special 2009 election. “Being elected mayor of Detroit, my hometown, was an honor and a privilege,” Kilpatrick said in a statement. “I want to thank everyone who supported me through the years… I wish Ken Cockrel Jr. the best of luck.”